JACOB Rees-Mogg has informed his wife and six children that shortages mean their Christmas feast will be a mere 12-bird roast instead of the usual 17.
Issues in the supply chain, which the patriarch assured them had no connection to ‘God’s own blessed Brexit’, have left the family five birds short of their traditional dinner and the children bereft.
Rees-Mogg said: “Telling Mary, Thomas, Peter, Alfred, Anselm and little Sextus that we would not be dining as our Regency forebears did was heartbreaking. I hate to think of them going without.
“But tragically we’ve been unable to secure several birds including the lapwing, Ortolan bunting and lark. If I was not owner of half Somerset we may struggle for the rest, but fortunately we bag our own pigeons, partridges, ducks, geese and pheasants.
“Her Majesty has granted me leave to strangle one of her swans, which I plan to do in Regent’s Park later today, and I have dispatched my batman – on foot – to Paris to purchase a turkey.
“We will not stoop to incude a chicken. Their flesh is serf’s food.”
A bereft Anselm Mogg said: “Pater has told us we may still tour the asylums to laugh at the deranged on Boxing Day, so the season is not lost.”